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The Way Home
by Bibi Wein
Blueline, 2005
The Way Home: A Wilderness Journey, Bibi Wein, Tupelo Press 2004, $16.95 pb ISBN: 1-932195-13-0
Reviewed by Anthony O. Tyler
The Way Home engages us in the coming to nature of a woman accustomed to living in the suburbs and the city. She tells her story with candor and takes us along with her as she grows into a deeper understanding of her life and the nature of the Adirondacks. Bibi Wein grew up near Philadelphia and as an adult became a writer living near and in New York City. At a crucial point in life, after the breakup of her marriage, she discovers a new dimension outside the city in various natural locations with a new companion. The book tells how this new direction gradually led to the purchase of a cabin in the Adirondacks, a re-centering of her life at the cabin which came to be "home."
About a year after buying their cabin, she and Bob got lost on what was to be a short afternoon walk. The first two chapters describe how they were forced to spend the night in the woods unprepared. The experience of being lost provides considerable suspense in itself and particularly engages anyone who has had a similar experience, which includes just about anyone who has spent much time in the woods. Further, the experience provides impetus for the entire book. First, being lost allows the author to show us the dynamics of her relationship with Bob, a dynamic that indicates whey the continued to grow together. Friends later asked "whether we fought" (35), but instead they were able to "balance each other's state of mind."
Being lost was a transforming experience. Ms. Wein found herself "pleasantly mesmerized by the sweet smells of the forest" (36). When they found their way out, they were surprised not to recognize being a quarter of a mile from the cabin. Until being lost, she had not been sure that the cabin was right for them, but afterwards "something had changed" (69). She writes "when the familiar became strange...my love for the place became possible" (72). The book goes on to relate her new preoccupation "with what it would mean to know this land" (71) and make this place home. The process involved getting to know neighbors, accepting changes on neighbor's land, and adapting their own place to their needs.
Ms. Wein values trees: "all my life, I'd regarded trees as a feature of landscape that, barring encounters with nature's more violent extremes, would last "forever" (76). She came to know and love an old empty farmhouse and surrounding forest on a nearby hill. And she soon became friends with the absentee owners, an old man and his son, Ernie and Herman. Her attachment to the place became such that "Going up the hill had become a kind of pilgrimage" (85). It was a tremendous shock, therefore, when she discovered "selected" cutting of the forest had become a clearcut. She felt she had failed to protect her friend the forest. A different but similar shock occurred when the trees immediately across the brook from their property were cut. She writes, "the logging on Duane's place seemed... an act of rage" (98). These changes in the nearby landscape required the author to reexamine her values in relation to the land and her attachment to it.
One of the nearest neighbors, Jim, was a year-round resident who would open their cabin in advance of their arrival. But his friendship provided challenges of its own, including accepting his yard full of recyclable machinery of all kinds. Adapting to change in general was one of the greatest lessons: "my time here has begun to teach me that things can change, and yet the center can hold" (167). Trees die, neighbors and friends die, still beauty and value persist.
This acceptance of change was necessary for her to start to think of the cabin as "home." The building of a studio separate from the cabin itself, where she could write, further contributed to her growing attachment. What she and Bob achieved, she feels, was a balance in their relationship and in their lives, a balance essentially made possible by their love of nature and coming to regard a cabin in the Adirondacks as home.